"

"Perhaps you ain't one to observe closely, Abel," said Timothy, not
taking note of any interruption, simply using the time to direct a
stream of tobacco juice to an incredible distance, but landing it neatly
in the exact spot he had intended. "It's a trade by itself, you might
say, observin' is, an' there's another sing'lar corraption! The Whigs
in foreign parts, so they say, build stone towers to observe the evil
machinations of the Tories, an' so the word 'observatory' come into
general use! All entomology; nothin' but entomology."

"I don't see where in thunder you picked up so much larnin', Timothy!"
It was Abel Day's exclamation, but every one agreed with him.

XX. THE ROD THAT BLOSSOMED

IVORY BOYNTON had taken the horse and gone to the village on an errand,
a rare thing for him to do after dark, so Rod was thinking, as he sat
in the living-room learning his Sunday-School lesson on the same evening
that the men were gossiping at the brick store. His aunt had required
him, from the time when he was proficient enough to do so, to read
at least a part of a chapter in the Bible every night. Beginning with
Genesis he had reached Leviticus and had made up his mind that the Bible
was a much more difficult book than "Scottish Chiefs," not withstanding
the fact that Ivory helped him over most of the hard places. At the
present juncture he was vastly interested in the subject of "rods"
as unfolded in the book of Exodus, which was being studied by his
Sunday-School class. What added to the excitement was the fact that
his uncle's Christian name, Aaron, kept appearing in the chronicle, as
frequently as that of the great lawgiver Moses himself; and there were
many verses about the wonder-working rods of Moses and Aaron that had a
strange effect upon the boy's ear, when he read them aloud, as he loved
to do whenever he was left alone for a time. When his aunt was in the
room his instinct kept him from doing this, for the mere mention of the
name of Aaron, he feared, might sadden his aunt and provoke in her that
dangerous vein of reminiscence that made Ivory so anxious.

"It kind o' makes me nervous to be named 'Rod,' Aunt Boynton," said the
boy, looking up from the Bible. "All the rods in these Exodus chapters
do such dreadful things! They become serpents, and one of them swallows
up all the others: and Moses smites the waters with a rod and they
become blood, and the people can't drink the water and the fish die!